speeddeamon wrote:
Hi Sameer,
I request you to kindly go over my brief profile and give feedback on the same. It would be great if you could suggest some schools where I have good chance of getting admitted.
My profile:
Age : 30
Nationality : Indian
Experience : 8+ (specifics below)
GMAT : first attempt - 680 (49Q, 34 V)
second attempt - 760 (48Q, 46V) [this is 3 months after the first attempt]
Undergrad : Engineering (Mechanical) with 78% from a not so famous university in India, ranked 3rd in class
Areas of Interest : Entrepreneurship (in Healthcare IT sector), marketing & strategy
Experience details:
5 years in IT services (software engineer, senior software engineer for a mid-size US based Indian software company). Good leadership experience here.
3 years in Healthcare IT (for a large multinational, in their healthcare equipment business unit. Not on software implementation side, but on the innovation side where I work with marketing and other teams to study market opportunities, mainly value-added-services and come up with solutions which will later be implemented by some other team/vendor). Not much official leadership experience here because most of the time I was in teams where the average experience of team members were 15+.
Extracurricular :
@college: student representative in career management cell, played key role in bringing companies to campus for recruitment.
played important role in college politics, organized campaigns for college union elections, and unsuccessfully ran for chairmanship
twice in organizing committee of a national level symposium competition organized by our department
@work: Started a alumni project sponsorship program at my college. Enlisted 7 other classmates to co-sponsor the project.
Started and ran a chapter of toastmasters at our office campus for more than 2 years.
One of the coordinators in my company's community involvement initiative.
Organized multiple outdoor activities (treks, leisure activities) for my team which is about 50 member strong
My main worries are my age, the undergrad university not being famous, and the chance of being put in the Indian/IT/male category though I have a slightly different background than the typical IT guy.
Extra background info: Along with my normal projects at work, I am parallely working on a small scale corporate venture that grew out from a concept I created early last year. Its an equipment for training medical students to do minimally invasive cardiac surgery. After presenting the concept to many members of the senior management and receiving good feedback, we (a team of 3, a cardiologist, a software architect, and me) received funding for prototyping which is being done by an intern we recruited for the same. Along with guiding the intern, I am also looking at analyzing the market potential, the competitive landscape, and the possible positioning of the equipement. Should I mark this activity as a separate venture experience or include this project under my normal project description section?
Thank you very much for your time!
Ola Speedy-bandhu,
Let's start with your concerns first and lay them to rest before we move on to the main (and I think more important) queries.
>> My main worries are my age, the undergrad university not being famous, and the chance of being put in the Indian/IT/male category though I have a slightly different background than the typical IT guy.- Age: I was older than you when I started my application process. Read the first post to see how that story panned out. We can't take 100% responsibility for the cruel jokes nature plays on us (no wonder aloe vera has a lot of fans). But beyond that focus on stuff that you can control. Make your profile attractive enough and people will look at you and go - 'inki twacha se inki profile ke strength ka pata bilkul nahi lagta'. We'll do some of that in this post.
- Undergrad University: Everyone isn't fortunate enough to get into an IIT. But with due respects, at the end of the day it's a technical institution (I'm ignoring their forays into management education). There's no guarantee that an extremely gifted technical guy who cracked the IIT-JEE would do equally well in the business world.
As a corollary, there's also nothing that says that guys who attended other institutions don't have what it takes to succeed in the business world. There's more to judging managerial potential than this. Adcoms know that and look for other elements from your profile before making a decision.
So all ye non-IIT junta out there...stop stressing out.
- 'being put in the Indian/IT/male category'
Be proud of your roots, man. Check out the guy from the HCL ad (who else finds the ad ridiculous, pls raise your hands). He's got the whole world at his feet. He makes I-bankers look like nincompoops. And he doesn't even use Axe Deos.
But on a serious note, again I feel this should actually work in your favour. Imagine being clubbed into a pool where you'd naturally stand out coz your profile isn't like the rest of the guys you are getting compared with.
Any more concerns that you want me to crush...do let me know. Happy to be of assistance.
With that we move on to your primary queries.
I had to read your Healthcare IT role 3 times for me to comprehend what you actually do. It is quite an unconventional role, my friend. And a pretty interesting one.
One quick tip. When you are writing your essays try to simplify the concept and use examples to make it easy for someone who's not from your industry to appreciate and understand. If you see heavy buzzwords and cliches, see if you can replace them with something that's more visual and common sense.
On the leadership topic, if you've already demonstrated this in your earlier role, that's good enough. Your current role definition is substantially different that the first one. It doesn't have the same team structure and the same mandates. If you've successfully been a leader, a technical guy, a team member, a salesman...but in different roles, I'd say that's damn good. You've shown potential and you've show flexibility. If I'm running an organisation, I'd rather have someone like you who can don many hats...rather than a self-proclaimed 'leader' who knows nothing more than throwing his weight around.
The 'Extra background info' section is really very interesting. If this is a self-driven initiative, find a way to project it properly. This is not part of your regular job-description. In my first job, I got the opportunity to be part of a similar experiment. The loosely applicable technical tag for what you are doing there is 'Corporate Venturing'. It's your idea, being funded and incubated by your current company, as opposed to an external VC team.
How you project this experience will be critical in showcasing your entrepreneurial abilities (see? another feather in the hat right there).
You've got many things to talk about (given your rich experience and your diverse exposure). Your challenge will be to pick and choose the gems from there and use them appropriately in your application. I hope you are already working on your apps.
Good luck.
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Updated on: 24 Jul 2023, 04:02
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